h her. She had sickened, and she longed for the
lodges of the Shoshonis. Chaboneau, too, had become weary of a
civilized life.

Sacagawea at last returned to her "home folks" the Snakes. No doubt
Chaboneau went with her. But there is record that he was United States
interpreter, in 1837, on the upper Missouri; and that he died of
small-pox among the Mandans, soon afterward.

The Bird-woman out-lived him. She and her boy removed with the Snakes
to the Wind River reservation, Wyoming; and there, near Fort Washakie,
the agency, she died on April 9, 1884, aged ninety-six years, and maybe
more.

A brass tablet marks her grave. A mountain peak in Montana has been
named Sacagawea Peak. A bronze statue of her has been erected in the
City Park of Portland, Oregon. Another statue has been erected in the
state capitol at Bismarck, North Dakota.

So, although all the wages went to her husband, she knows that the
white people of the great United States remember the loving services of
the brave little Bird-woman, who without the promise of pay, helped
carry the Flag to the Pacific.

CHAPTER XVII

THE LANCE OF MAHTOTOHPA (1822-1837)

HERO TALES BY FOUR BEARS THE MANDAN

While the United States was getting acquainted with the Western
Indians, there lived among the Mandans in the north a most noted
hero--the chief Mah-to-toh-pa, or Four Bears.

Young Captain Lewis the Long Knife Chief, and stout Captain Clark the
Red Head, who with their exploring party wintered among the Mandans in
1804-1805, and enlisted the Snake Bird-woman as guide, were the first
white men to write a clear account of the curious Mandans; but they did
not tell the half.

For a curious people indeed were these Mandans, dwelling in two
villages on the Missouri River above present Washburn in central North
Dakota.

They were polite, hospitable, and brave. Their towns were defended by
ditches and loose timber palisades, not tight like those of the
Iroquois and Hurons. Their houses were circular; of an earthern floor
sunk two feet, and heavy six-foot logs set on end inside the edge of
it, with a roof of timbers, woven willow, and thick mud-plaster; with a
sunken fire-place under a hole in the center of the roof, and with
bunks, screened by elk-hides or buffalo-robes, along the walls.

These houses were large enough to shelter twenty to forty persons; the
roofs were favorite loafing spots, for men, women, and dogs.

The Mandans formed a h